Title: Associate Professor & Director of Undergraduate Studies
University: James Madison University School of Writing, Rhetoric and Technical Communication
Email: molloycs@jmu.edu
Twitter: @cathrynmolloy
Website: https://www.jmu.edu/wrtc/faculty/profiles/faculty/molloy-cathryn.shtml
Description of your work
As an RHM scholar, I focus on the role rhetorical ethos plays in various health and medical realties. I find that ethos offers a highly generative framework for investigating the roles stigmas and abuses play in patterns of persuasion as they relate to social reproduction in health and medicine and beyond. I focus, in particular, on stigmas that accompany psychiatric diagnoses and misdiagnoses of physical conditions as psychological problems. Working from ephemeral qualitative data, I trace everyday rhetors’ tactics for building and rebuilding their credibility when it is unfairly compromised. I am equally interested in women’s health advocacy and in producing scholarship that might offer methodological models for future RHM projects that take serendipity, creativity, and strong ethical grounding as major focal points. As a workshop facilitator at this year’s symposium, I’ll get to do one of my favorite things: hear all about what other RHM folks are up to with their research and writing!